Auto-disturbance rejection controller for novel planar switched reluctance motor

A novel planar motor based on the switched reluctance (SR) principle has been developed. This motor has the advantages of simple structure, low cost and ease of manufacture. The motor is highly reliable and can work in hostile working environments. However, in many industrial applications, the motor’s performance is subject to practical constraints, such as mechanical noise, load disturbance and friction. The motor cannot cope with these difficulties under classical PID control scheme. Therefore an auto-disturbance rejection control (ADRC) strategy is proposed to overcome these problems. An ADRC velocity control strategy is implemented on the planar motor, and its performance is then compared with a classical PID controller. Experiment results demonstrate that the motor is more resistant to disturbances under this new control scheme. It confirms that ADRC is an effective solution to overcome the inherent control problems of the SR planar motor. It is expected that the same method can be applied to other SR machines with the same promising results.